Table of Contents

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CBS News Monthly Poll, August 2007 (ICPSR 22583)

Principal Investigator(s):CBS News

Summary:

This poll, fielded August 8-12, 2007, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1214 adults were surveyed, including an oversample of 91 individuals with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president, whether they approved of the way Bush was handling the war i... (more info)

This poll, fielded August 8-12, 2007, is a part of a continuing series of monthly surveys that solicit public opinion on the presidency and on a range of other political and social issues. A national sample of 1214 adults were surveyed, including an oversample of 91 individuals with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves. Respondents were asked whether they approved of the way George W. Bush was handling his job as president, whether they approved of the way Bush was handling the war in Iraq, and the United States campaign again terrorism. Respondents were also asked to rate the national economy, if they followed the 2008 presidential campaign, and the first thing that came to mind when mentioning Barack Obama and Rudy Giuliani. They were also asked if they were registered to vote in their precinct, issues which were more important factors when deciding whom to vote for, and if they were satisfied with the candidates running for president. Respondent's opinions were also collected on whether they were satisfied with the Republican candidates running for nomination, whether their opinion was favorable, not favorable, undecided, or haven't heard enough about Rudy Giuliani, John McCain, Mitt Romney, Fred Thompson, Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, and Barack Obama. They were also asked whether the candidates cared about the needs of people like themselves, if they could deal wisely with an international crisis, and if they would make good decisions in dealing with foreign countries. Their opinion was also sought on how much confidence they had in the ability of the United States government to respond to natural disasters, how much progress had been made in rebuilding New Orleans and the Gulf Coast, the condition of the system of roads and bridges in the area where they lived, whether federal spending on rebuilding and maintaining roads and bridges should be increased, decreased, or kept the same, and if they would be willing to pay more taxes to improve roads, bridges, and public structures. A series of questions were asked about professional football players. They were queried if they thought that when professional football players are suspended for misconduct off the field, if the National Football League is being too tough on them, if they had heard or read about the dog-fighting allegations against Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick, if authorities treated Vick better than the average person because he was a professional athlete, and how interested they were in watching or following professional football. Demographic information includes sex, age, race, education level, marital status, household income, religious preference, religiosity, political party affiliation, if respondent was a born again Christian, and if there was anyone in the household between the ages of 18 and 24 years old.

Universe:
Persons aged 18 years and over living in households with telephones in the United States.

Data Types:
survey data

Data Collection Notes:

The data available for download are not weighted and users will need to weight the data prior to analysis.

The CASEID variable was reformatted in order to make it a unique identifier.

Truncated value label in variable EDUC was corrected.

This data collection was produced by CBS News, New York, NY.

Variable Q50 contains a truncated value label which is not
detailed in the documentation.

The data contain an oversample of those with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves as identified by the OSMP variable.

Methodology

Sample:
A variation of random-digit dialing (RDD) using primary sampling units (PSUs) was employed, consisting of blocks of 100 telephone numbers identical through the eighth digit and stratified by geographic region, area code, and size of place. Phone numbers were dialed from RDD samples of both standard land-lines and cell phones. Within households, respondents were selected using a method developed by Leslie Kish and modified by Charles Backstrom and Gerald Hursh (see Backstrom and Hursh, SURVEY RESEARCH. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 1963). This poll included an oversample of those with family members who are now serving in the United States armed forces or the United States reserves.

Time Method:
Cross-sectional

Weight:
The data contain weight variables that should be used in analyzing the data. According to the CBS News Web site, the data were weighted to match United States Census Bureau breakdowns on age, sex, race, education, and region of the country. The data were also adjusted for the fact that people who share a telephone with others have less chance to be contacted than people who live alone and have their own telephones, and that households with more than one telephone number have more chances to be called than households with only one telephone number.

Mode of Data Collection:
telephone interview

Extent of Processing: ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of
disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major
statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to
these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection: